


Absolute Clarity

by crazyjane



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gen, Mind Games
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-30
Updated: 2014-04-30
Packaged: 2018-01-21 08:52:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 439
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1544903
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crazyjane/pseuds/crazyjane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's a game, isn't it?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Absolute Clarity

**Author's Note:**

> Set after the events of _The Great Game_.

It’s a game, isn’t it? A heart-pounding, mind-twisting, race-against-time game. It’s about the adrenaline surging up in you and making you feel alive, more real than those thousands of faceless nonentities who pass you on the street every day and _never know_ who you are. And the terrible ennui that drives you almost to distraction because there isn’t anyone you can play against. Because everything is too easy.

You always knew I was out there, didn’t you? That was part of it – the circling, careful dance, glimpsing me from time to time. But you could never get close enough. There were always so many demands on your time – _help me, fix this, make my problem go away_. And you did it, over and over, because at least this way some small part of you was engaged with the world.

And you waited. Every tiny contact, every brush against each other brought us closer. You didn’t rush towards me – though you could have – because it needed to be perfect. Did you taunt yourself, drawing it out, wondering _what will he do next, how far have I been anticipated_?

Because I did.

I was worth waiting for, and when we finally laid eyes on each other you felt it then. That exquisite, crystal brilliance, hard and cold, sharp-edged and pitiless – didn’t it feel to you like looking in a mirror?

John Watson is the glass between us, and we looked through him, and there was absolute clarity. We were revealed.

And you realised it, then, and that’s why you couldn’t walk away, draw it out any further. You realised that you need me, and that you hate it. You need to know that I’m thinking about you because only I see you. No one else has ever made you feel this way.

I know you survived. I feel it.

Do you think about me now, at night? I know you don’t sleep very much at all, you don’t have time for that – but in the dark, in the quiet, it’s my voice you hear, isn’t it?

You tell yourself it’s all part of the game, that this is just a new board, that what your mind says to you in my voice is not true. That I’m not what you want. That I haven’t become as necessary to you as breathing. That in the end, you’ll make your final move and you’ll look into my eyes as I die. And you comfort yourself with that, and finally fall asleep.

And you try not to hear my voice as it follows you down, telling you _it’s not just a game anymore, Moriarty_.


End file.
